


Apologies

by skcm



Series: Waste [6]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, maccready swearing in his thought process at least aka my FAVE rj smut cliche, oh no they banged, still non chronological still not talking about romance still not saving the world together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:05:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skcm/pseuds/skcm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“One bed, one night, MacCready. It was nice to finally talk about this stuff but--”</p><p>“But?”</p><p>“Honestly? I trust you a hell of a lot and we’re just-- working pretty good together and you know, we listen to each other. And you kinda started missing shots here and there and you have this <i>look</i>, and you let me hold your hand.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apologies

A month stands between the foggy afternoon MacCready stood up for himself and the cold morning when the boss reaches for his hand.

He hears his own trembling voice over like a record when their fingers lace, a not so distant memory.

_You’re so weird, boss. I don’t mean good weird, I mean sending weird things in my direction like I’m not going to catch it, stuff like you think I’m not a person levels of weird._

He had to lay it down clean for her, six foot one and a half inch, broad as a building, two centuries old estranged mother of a son, toting a power fist or otherwise. He’s young, but he’s seen some stuff in his time, and he didn’t put up with the Gunners and their crap, so why should he put up with this runaround? He’s got standards and limitations like anyone else, and this powerhouse of a woman makes him _hydrate_ and he stabs stimpaks in her thighs after fights. He’s seen her tattoos-- all of them-- he’s seen every dang inch of her, the stretch marked skin across her stomach, loose in places where the muscle is tight.

So he feels safe enough to tell her in the thick of the wafting fog.

_Cut it out, because I don’t like being at the mercy of your f– of your drinking problem, or your other problems._

_Or you._

But it’s been a month of a real sort of partnership since then, a month of the boss saving his ass more times than he can count, but of MacCready saving hers, like, every five seconds. She’s still a walking disaster.

He just doesn’t want to admit to himself that she’s _his_ walking disaster.

He notices her body in different ways now, and at the most godawful, inopportune times. Down the length of his rifle, he realizes she’s got huge shoulders, that they’re blocking his sights. She needs to move, and she doesn’t. He needs to shift, and he doesn’t. Instead he waits for that ridiculous weapon of hers to make contact with the feral’s face, not even bothering to pull the trigger.

It’s sort of like Tex has come into her own, or something.

There’s this novel, quiet itch in the back of his brain, tempting like a shiny coin on the sidewalk, a relic. A little remnant, out of time and out of place.

He laughs at what he thinks about, sometimes. _Wouldn't it be nice if she just picked up a skyscraper and tossed it through the air?_ He figures if anyone’s capable, it’s her. She’s muscle and tendons and tearing across a street, vaulting over a barricade to sink her fist into a raider’s gut, and he wonders how heavy she must feel. Like, could he even breathe underneath her?

But she kissed him once and it was wrong.

Three twined finger days pass before he looks at her like the shiny thing on the sidewalk, and exactly like she’s his problem now.

And then it’s wrong all over again.

“You ever fuck anyone but your wife, MacCready?” Too soon, boss.

“ _What?_ ”

“Sorry, Mac-- I’m an asshole.”

“Yeah, I have. Why the heck are you asking me about _that_ at the dang _Rail_?”

“I just told you-- the whole asshole thing.”

“I noticed.”

“Sorry, I’m just anxious as hell.”

“I noticed that too.”

“Sorry.”

“You keep apologizing, Texas.”

She almost drops her glass of whiskey. “What did you call me?”

“Your name, right?” He’s already regretting his words.

She’s regretting hers. They really are mirror images sometimes.

“...Yeah,” she smiles, easy. “Yeah, it is. Well, it is now. Used to be Charlotte Stern, if we’re gonna get technical.”

The last thing MacCready wants is to get technical with her again. “Tex,” he echoes. “You always want me to call you that. It’s just so-- it doesn’t feel like you.”

“That’s ‘cause it was my stage name back when I danced.”

“Charlotte Stern, huh? Charlotte. Charlie-Charlotte.”

“Tex,” she corrects. “Don’t call me Charlie. My father’s name was Charlie.”

“You mentioned him. Psycho brisket.”

“...I’m changing the subject.”

“Be my guest, Tex.”

She arcs her brows. He has these charming little bouts of kindness, of compassion, that make her feel so safe. “Thank you. I mean it. You’re--”

“Hey, it’s nothing.”

“Sorry we’re both assholes.”

MacCready softens. “Well I’m not sorry, it’s some kinda survival in us. You’re okay, you know? Almost one of a kind if you ask me.”

 _Two sides of the same coin_ , he thinks to himself.

It’s a night of low voices at the bar. She tells him about Ella Jackson, her college roommate and the first person she ever loved. She has just as much to say about Doctor Whitney Rook (the second person she ever loved) and his genius books (because the man was a genius, and whatever he touched was also genius, except for her-- she could never compare).

But she doesn’t talk much about the man she married. He was an escape, and a damned good one, and she loved everything about him from his freckled, olive skin to his hideous mutton chops, to his fucking _heart_ , to the child he gave her. And she doesn’t want to go there tonight.

They both have more pressing destinations in mind when she asks him if he wants to check into the Rexford.

“One bed, one night, MacCready. It was nice to finally talk about this stuff but--”

“But?”

“Honestly? I trust you a hell of a lot and we’re just-- working pretty good together and you know, we listen to each other. And you kinda started missing shots here and there and you have this _look_ , and you let me hold your hand.”

“Heck, boss-- Tex, sorry.”

“You’re apologizing too much, Mac.” She grins at him, nerves ticking.

They make it inside the rented room, holding hands all the way up the stairs and taking turns in the lead. Synergy.

The door’s pretty far, right? Heck, MacCready even slams the thing shut, even turns the rusty lock before Tex has her arms draped over his shoulders and is kissing him like the trainwreck she is-- fierce and alive and _everything_.

There’s no room for talking, no room between them. There’s room though for how tight her grip is on his shoulder and how happy he is, back of his head hard against the door, that he closed it-- what a relief, what a dang--

She bites his lower lip and then his spine is just-- it’s nothing.

The way he moves against her, the way he kisses her is all fluid motions, gliding through water, clean like it’s two hundred and ten years ago but still treacherous, swirling instead of splashing, and it’s sink or swim and he’s dying either way. MacCready bobs at the surface, gasping for air against her neck.

She traces a line down the center of his back with her fingernails and--

 _Oh_. Their clothes aren’t even off.

She’s got this _thing_ on, this obstructive set of layers, this crap she doesn’t need-- _he_ doesn’t need. He wants to see her tattoos, every inch of her, from the stretch marks on her stomach to the thighs where he jabs stimpaks, ‘cause she’s so accident prone-- but he wants them around his shoulders like, now. Right now, and _oh_.

Oh, shit.

Crap.

She gives him this forceful shove like she’s stone and he’s some rubbery little _something_ , and he staggers backwards from where he was so, so close.

And he likes it, and she knows because he laughs, so she steers him to the bed and-- _oh_.

Oh, fuck. There’s nothing, _nothing_ that should stop them other than the yank at his collar, but he matches her aggression, mouth everywhere-- and everywhere really fucking hard, really goddamn insistent. MacCready’s never bested, never turns down a challenge, never--

Oh, hell. She’s fast with fingers, fast with this out of nowhere fucking finesse, and he’s got these worn canvas pants around his fucking ankles, all these stupid, stupid trappings he dons like a shield sinking to the floor along with them.

She steers him back again, which is when he figures out he fucking _can’t_ breathe under her as soon as he hits the bed, gasping and roiling and ecstatic about those stimpak stabbed thighs fucking squeezing his hips and--

“Oh my _god_ ,” he hisses out when she tosses her grubby goddamn t-shirt across the room, like it’s some spank mag fantasy, like _she’s_ some spank mag fantasy, but hell if she’s anything but real right now, cupping her own breasts like-- shit. _Shit_. He licks his thumb, grazes her nipple, and she clenches her thighs around him.

It’s all downhill from here, the maddest descent into sweat and lips and hips and teeth and skin, and damn is she loud when she likes something and _oh_ \--

 _Oh_ , oh fucking hell, they’re gonna end up sharing an entire pack of cigarettes after this, when they reach the bottom of this fucking spiral descent into some kind of bliss-- and it _is_ that, it’s _just_ that-- the word is so precise, a sniper accurate kinda thing.

And even still, there's no poetry, no _symphony_  like the unbelievable sensation of desperate, rolling hips, and three days of laced fingers feeling so, so right.

**Author's Note:**

> sex is way more fun for me to write when it's all feelings and energy and when i get to do maccready's inner monologue, tbh, because i am trash with smut usually.
> 
> also, shoegaze & dreampop are so good for writing sex scenes.


End file.
